India's nuclear challenge

China's Prime Minister, Zhao Ziyang, ringed India this month in a
diplomatic swing of Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh like a Bionic Man who had been carefully programmed by his creator, Deng Xiaoping, not to eat dogs.

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Bhabani Sen Gupta

November 19, 2013

ISSUE DATE: June 30, 1981

UPDATED: October 13, 2014 17:38 IST

An American television series featured a Bionic Man, reconstructed from an aeroplane wreck. After numerous surgeries by ambitious and expert doctors, the Bionic Man ran faster than a gazelle, lifted weight heavier than a crane could lift, saw further than a telescope.

A miracle of scientific reconstruction. One evening, the Bionic Man, while discussing poetry with a bunch of gaping young girls collected by the fireside, suddenly reached down, picked up the cocker spaniel, and ate it. "Jesus Christ!" gasped his scientist-creators, "we forgot to programme him not to eat dogs."

China's Prime Minister, Zhao Ziyang, ringed India this month in a diplomatic swing of Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh like a Bionic Man who had been carefully programmed by his creator, Deng Xiaoping, not to eat dogs. The assassination of the President of Bangladesh, Ziaur Rahman, and a short-lived "sepoy mutiny" in Chittagong, did not detach Dacca from his itinerary. Zhao also made scheduled visits to Pakistan and Nepal.

He performed his second peripatetic diplomatic tango with tootles of dovish music, signalling a coming cascade of Chinese friendship similar to the one released by Zhou En-lai at Bandung in 1955. Even on the bristling theme of Soviet expansionism. Zhao was less than burning with rage.

His formal utterances in Pakistan and Nepal were a chamber ensemble of sweet harmonies. China, as depicted in the tableau of Zhao's rhetoric, wanted no conflict in south Asia, wished to live in peaceful friendship with all countries in the region, and stood erect for normal relations between and among the regional neighbors.

Closely on the heels of Zhao Ziyang, India's periscopic Foreign Minister, Narasimha Rao, coupled with his Pakistani counterpart at Islamabad in an effort to better understand each other's security perspectives and in search of elusive areas of agreement. Here too scented sniffs of friendship blew from both foreign ministers.

There was no flexing of muscles, no rhetoric of strength or strife. In a way both Zhao's and Rao's visits to Pakistan were in preparation of a much bigger diplomatic drama scheduled for a gala opening in New Delhi in a few days: the much-delayed, much-expected visit of the Chinese Foreign Minister, Huang Hua.

A light-footed diplomat, Huang will be coming with a portfolio bulging with olive branches. He lacks the stature of Zhou En-lai, but his visit is programmed to open up vistas of Sino-Indian good-neighbourliness, and, in this respect, is comparable to Zhou's New Delhi visit of 1956.

Dangerous Drift: Have the angels of peace and friendship suddenly descended on the conflict-torn subcontinent ushering in a new leaf of peace and amity? Hardly. At best, the diplomatic strivings are designed to arrest the region's dangerous drift towards renewed tensions and conflicts.

The strategic environment in south Asia is not only malefic, but also highly confused. But towering over the confused scenario is India's image as the world's next viable nuclear power. The decision has not been taken in New Delhi yet. But the world believes it has been.

Indeed, a malevolent strategic environment plagues the region. The killing of Ziaur Rahman and the army rebellion in Chittagong have mangled the feeble Bangladesh bodypolitik. It will take time, and perhaps several traumatic events, before Bangladesh can once again find a plateau of political stability and social balance.

Prolonged internal instability in the eastern flank of the-subcontinent will strain the security of the entire region. Volatile external forces are at work, eager to fish in troubled waters wherever such waters may be found.

When these external forces mesh with internal turmoils, the resultant tensions tear at politically circumscribed systems. This is what happened to Bangladesh in the end of May. It can happen to Pakistan any moment.

How profoundly the strategic scenario in south Asia has changed was partially underlined recently by India's new Chief of Army Staff, General K.V. Krishna Rao. The Chinese have built an oil pipeline to Tibet, and are building a railway line linking the roof of the world to Beijing.

Seven to eight divisions of Chinese troops are stationed in Tibet. The Chinese have so remarkably improved roads and airfields in Tibet that they can move 20 to 30 more divisions there if necessary.

Pakistan, General Rao pointed out, is negotiating substantial arms transfers from the United States; has increased and is still increasing its troops strength, and is getting ready for its first nuclear blast in 1982. The Karakoram highway is now an all-weather road; a second strategic link road is under construction between China's Xinjiang and Pakistan's Gilgit.

Credible Programme: Nor is India resting on its laurels. India has undertaken a sizeable programme of weapons modernization costing Rs 3,200 crore to Rs 4,800 crore over a period of five to seven years.

India is getting ready to make its "appropriate response" to the Pakistani nuclear blast. That, most observers believe, will be the combination of a thermonuclear blast in the Rajasthan desert and a decision to produce nuclear weapons.

Nehru and Zhou En-lai: The early days of 'bhai-bhai'

This "appropriate response" is the demand not only of almost the entire political and intellectual elite. It is also supported by the military, for the first time, openly. The College of Combat's journal has devoted its latest issue to a nuclear response debate. Only three of 12 military men who have taken part in the debate have argued against India going nuclear.

The military doesn't want a cosmetic Bomb. India's "appropriate response" to Pakistan's nuclear capability must be, according to military planners, a credible weapons programme that takes into account China's second strike capability and is able to match it before the end of the decade. Nothing else could sustain India's regional primacy vis-a-vis nuclear Pakistan.

Military planners point out that a credible nuclear weapons programme is well within the country's economic means. It will not call for the addition of one percentage point to the 3.5 per cent of GNP India now spends on defence. India would still be at the bottom of the list of nations in terms of percentage of GNP consumed by defence.

If there is one country that must take the darkest view of India emerging as a viable nuclear power, it is China. With a serious effort, India might edge very close to China's nuclear strength before the end of the decade, and the Chinese know it. That would be stealing away whatever great power status China has acquired since its first nuclear blast in 1964.

But that is only one reason for China's distaste of India's nuclear power.

If India goes nuclear remaining a close friend of the Soviet Union and if China's own relations with the USSR continue to remain dark and menacing, the Chinese would feel "encircled" by Indo-Soviet nuclear power.

The Chinese leaders probably believe that the only way to stop India from going in for nuclear weapons is to remove all clouds from India's primacy as south Asia's regional power. This is, according to several foreign diplomats in New Delhi, the chief motivation behind China's anxiety to normalise relations with India.

The Chinese leaders have expressed their readiness to concede to India a role of regional leadership and they have been gently pressing Pakistan since 1980 to live in amity with India. China, however, has no leverage to persuade Pakistan to fold up its nuclear power ambitions.

Huang: Dovish noises

If any power enjoys that leverage, it is the United States. The Reagan Administration, however, has decided to close its eyes to Pakistan's nuclear programme. China and the United States therefore no longer agree completely on a strategic approach to the south Asian region.

The Reagan Administration is trying to mulct India's regional stature by detaching Pakistan and Sri Lanka from the geostrategic region of south Asia. In US strategic thinking Pakistan now is part of south-west Asia, a region that extends from Egypt to Pakistan, taking in its sweep the Middle East as well as the Persian Gulf.

Pakistan is coupled to America's strategic designs for south-west Asia, which enables US strategic planners to attach only marginal importance to India's reactions to what they want to do with Pakistan in order to beef up south-west Asia's military power to resist real or imaginary Soviet expansionism.

At the same time, encouraged by the US, Sri Lanka has formally applied for membership of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) despite the fact that the five ASEAN members are not at all enthusiastic to admit Colombo to their limited regional fraternity.

Confused Scenario: The detachment of Pakistan from the geostrategic region of south Asia goes against the grain of China's foreign policy strategies for the region. With Pakistan as a salient, China has been able to make its influence felt on the subcontinent's affairs. South-west Asia is not as vital to China's national interests as it is to the national interests of the US, the Soviet Union and India.

China imports no oil from the Persian Gulf and has very little trade or economic relations with the Middle Eastern and Gulf countries. On the other hand, China has had 25 years of unbroken friendship with Pakistan and has exercised considerable influence on that country. That influence will steadily wane if the US can detach Pakistan from south Asia and integrate it strategically with the south-west Asian strategic region.

Strategic differences with the Reagan Administration may have prompted the Chinese leaders to permit the outside world to have a first glimpse of the searing debate that has been going on in the Communist Party of China (CPC) leadership on whether or not Beijing should move towards better relations with the USSR.

Two western analysts, one British and the other American, have discovered two contending schools of thinking in the CPC leadership. One school believes that the Soviet Union has edged ahead of the US in military power and has embarked on a career of relentless expansionism; it must therefore be contained in limited cooperation with the United States.

The other school argues that the Soviet Union is not that strong and powerful, but is beset with political, economic and social problems at home and in the bloc; China therefore need not be afraid of the USSR but could proceed cautiously to normalise relations with it. The official line still reflects the first school of thinking but the other school has also been brought to the knowledge of the world.

Huang Hua, then, is coming to Delhi to take a first-hand look at India perkily poised on the brink of its nuclear reincarnation. He has been briefed by the Chinese premier on the situation obtaining in Pakistan and on the results of his conversations with its military rulers.

The strategic environment in south Asia is not only malefic, but also highly confused. But towering over the confused scenario is India's image as the world's next viable nuclear power. The decision has not been taken in New Delhi yet. But the world believes it has been. China will be the first power to probe how best to cope with nuclear India.

Maybe in Chinese and other neighbouring eyes India is the decade's Bionic Man programmed to eat neither dog nor mouse.

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